Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to the field of electronic mapping and to computerized data processes, including point of interest data. More specifically, and without limitation, the exemplary embodiments described herein relate to systems and methods for ingesting point of interest data and efficiently combining the data with previously stored point of interest data to provide more complete point of interest information to end users.
Background
In addition to maps and directions, online web mapping services may provide a variety of other useful information to their users, such as point of interest. Among other things, points of interest may include hotels, restaurants, amusement parks, sports facilities, universities, parks, etc. To enhance a user's experience with these points of interest, an online mapping service may provide detailed information about each point of interest, including services associated with the point of interest. For example, point of interest information for a restaurant may include location, cuisine type, description, menus, ratings, and user reviews, among other types of information. Further, the online web mapping service may also provide services associated with the restaurant, such as directions or reservations.
Point of interest information may come from various sources, such as users and third-party vendors. Some point of interest information may originate in-house (e.g., prepared by the online web mapping service). Regardless of the source, when a mapping service receives the point of interest information, it must process it so that the information may be delivered to third-party users and/or other users of the mapping service.
Current systems of ingesting point of interest data merge data from each data source (e.g., each vendor) to obtain one data set. For example, the data received from vendors may be merged with one another, and with previously received point of interest data, on a periodic basis, such as three times a week (e.g., Monday, Wednesday, and Friday). Whereas only some of the new point of information may represent a change from previous information, conventional systems process this redundant data along with new data as part of the merge process.
Moreover, different data sources may provide different types of point of interest information. Current data ingestion systems designate a standard set of data points and collect only the information related to these data points, discarding the rest. For example, one vendor may provide an address, telephone number, rating, and cuisine type for a restaurant, and another vendor may provide an address, telephone number, images, menus, and user reviews for the restaurant. Mapping services and vendors may only store address, telephone number, rating, and user review information, thus the cuisine type, images, and menu information will be discarded.
As discussed above, conventional techniques for ingesting or processing point of interest data suffer from drawbacks or disadvantages that affect their ability to efficiently provide information to third-party users and other users. For example, by merging all point of interest data received from a vendor in a current upload, rather than just the data that is unique from previously received or other point of interest data, conventional data ingestion systems waste significant processing resources. Moreover, as discussed above, current systems simply discard potentially valuable point of interest information when that information does not fit within statically defined parameters or other standard parameters. Yet, this information may have uses for third-party users of online mapping services that may not have been apparent at the time the standard parameters were defined.